Smith's resum e includes sideman stints with the great R & B saxophonist King Curtis and the arranger/bandleader Johnny Williams; extensive work as a jazz educator, Broadway pit band musician and musical director of the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. Downbeat time for Smithand his Harlem Legends is 7:30 p.m. The Williamsburg Composers' Orchestra opens for them at 6, rain or shine.

As part of the Atheneum's First Thursday festivities tonight, Dr. Rackle and the Red Hot Barbecue Swingers kick off the city's month of jazz mania. The free, sunset jam session runs from 5to 8 p.m. in the museum's outdoor Gengras Court. In case of rain, the concert takes refuge in the museum's Avery Court.

Founded by Raymond Williams, a trumpeter and New Orleans native, the 10-piece brass band models itself after Dejan's Olympia Brass Band, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (which plays free in Bushnell Park July 19 at 7 p.m. as part of Mark Twain Days). Williams, who has toured and recorded with Hartford jazz great Jackie McLean, teaches at the Artists Collective and at the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music.

Also in a jazz vein, the Atheneum's First Thursday features a talk on the 1950s jazz scene by critic Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Newark, N.J. Morgenstern's talk, which is also free, will be presented in the museum's Hartford Courant Room.

Both the concert and Morgenstern's talk are co- presented by the Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz. ThomHarris, president of the festival, says they are both a warm-up for the upcoming festival and part of an effort to remind the public that jazz is a strong cultural force in the city year-round at various venues, Harris says.

The festival is a free, rain-or- shine event running July 24 to 26 in Bushnell Park. Highlights include the great Latin jazz pianist Danilo Perez, July 24; an organ summit swing fest featuring funkmeisters Charles Earland, Dr. Lonnie Liston Smith and Joey DeFrancesco, plus the incomparable vibraphonist Milt Jackson and his combo, July 25; and jazz legend and longtime Wilton resident, Dave Brubeck, in the finale, July 26. For information, call (860) 722-6231.